Hanging on at the helm of the boat taking the GMSL team to the outer islands at Kalpitiya

We start early to visit the outer islands, moving through lush mangrove forests to check out the ways in which tourism is happening, the conditions of fisher communities, the work that is being done by young fisher folk to uplift their lifestyles and determine how we can further improve our interventions. The rocket boat (yeah, that’s what it felt like when I was at the helm, hanging on for dear life with spray blasting in my face and the twin 40HP engines churning up a wake that stretched for a good hundred meters). I would rather that we went by a more Eco-friendly boat but sadly, those were not yet introduced to those areas and hell, these people had their hands full just making ends meet without us pontificating about environment to them.  At the very least they were trying to replant the damaged mangroves, the sea grasses looked to be in decent condition and the communities had obtained electricity just a couple of days before. So far so good but their tourism was, hum ho… how to put it… junk? Heh. Again, at least they were doing it comparatively smaller scale and not at the level of hotels that were running rough shod over pretty much anyone and everything. We saw much sustainable potential but conservative use of marine resources is an area that is significantly gapped. We have a bit of work to do on those issues but as always, the Greens don’t crusade with fundamentalist zeal because we know that fundamental anything is just plain dumb. A lot of decent men and women do engage in that sort of foundation level error because they fail to read situations and scenarios. We try to be a bit more holistic in approach.

Becoming friends with a few strangling mangroves off the coast of one of the outer islands